About the 2011 winner, John Olson
John Olson is the author of eight books of poetry and prose poetry, including Swarm of Edges (1996), Echo Regime (1999), Eggs & Mirrors (1999), Logo Lagoon (1999), Free Stream Velocity (2003), Oxbow Kazoo (2005), The Night I Dropped Shakespeare On The Cat (2006), and Backscatter: New And Selected Poetry (2008). He is also the author of two novels: Souls of Wind (2008), about the adventures of French poet Arthur Rimbaud in the American West where he meets Billy the Kid, and The Nothing That Is (2010), an autobiographical novel written from the 2nd person point of view. The Seeing Machine, a novel about the French Cubist painter Georges Braque, is forthcoming from Quale Press. Larynx Galaxy, a collection of essays, stories, and prose poetry, is due out soon from Black Widow Press.
In 2004, Olson was the recipient of The Stranger Genius Award for Literature. He has also received three Fund For Poetry Awards and Souls Of Wind was shortlisted for a Believer magazine book of the year award.
John Olson also keeps a blog, Tillalala Chronicles, at www.tillalala.blogspot.com
John lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife Roberta and their cat Toby. No actual book has been dropped on Toby. Toby’s feelings about Shakespeare remain private and mute, but his passion for treats and cherry pie are immodestly undisguised, and continue unabated.
From the Black Widow Press site (http://www.blackwidowpress.com/ ):
What advance readers are saying about John Olson's upcoming: Larynx Galaxy!!!
"John Olson is afraid of no word or trope of words, and especially not of tropes of ideas looming into and out of one another. And no emotion or boundaryless compounding of emotions is beyond likelihood in the presence of his surging perceptions as they float in inspiration. Larynx Galaxy is also a syrinx galaxy playing on the panpipes of imagination."
-Michael McClure
John Olson's Larynx Galaxy is a cross between The Poetics of Space and The Revolution of Everyday Life. It spins off both of these seminal texts and recreates a new Utopian boundary-free world in which all the senses are engaged simultaneously and the mind is a minefield where you (the reader) must proceed at your own risk. Olson is an encylopedist, a bricologist, an omnivore--the total package, as they say--in the tradition of The Pillow Book and Walden. He has written a text for the ages--brilliant, hallucinatory, clearheaded--verging on the edges of infinity, yet forever at home in the world.
--- Lewis Warsh
"Olson is an original, and that accomplishment is an extraordinary feat at this point in the long history of literature. His prose poems do not remind me of anyone else's work. While elements of Surrealism are involved, he is not a Surrealist: while his non-narrative, exploding juxtapositions reveal a background awareness of Surrealism, thematic development is always present, so that a given work of one to three pages, unlike Language Poetry, does not erase itself as it proceeds; there is a floating focus that functions like a jungle gym. On this "gym," Olson displays his linguistic acrobatics, juxtaposing the totally unexpected with, to borrow Hart Crane's marvelous phrase, "the logic of metaphor." So a piece advances in several directions at once and concludes when its duration is sensed as complete." ----Clayton Eshleman
Our release of Backscatter: New and Selected Poems provides a good introduction to the prose poems of John Olson. Larynx Galaxy will take the reader to the next plane of the Olson experience.
Comments on John Olson's Backscatter, his prose poems and poetry:
"John Olson's poetry is a linguistic burlesque show. Every aspect of the English language gets done up in feathers and spangles to shimmy and titillate, and you can almost hear the bawdy trombone accenting John Olson's post-structuralist puns, his sonic shenanigans. He announces as much in the first line of this excellent compendium: '"The exhilaration of poetry is in its gall, its brassy irrelevence and gunpowder vowels, its pulleys and popcorn and delirious birds.'" ..Olson's far too playful a poet to ever get his critical due in polite society. Nonetheless, he is a true catawampus heir to the American lyric tradition of Dickinson, Poe, Stevens, and Ashbery (by way of Robert Desnos and Raymond Roussel, among many gleeful others)....These works have been selected astutely, and presented in a kind of Olson Omnibus...Firmly outside the academia, Olson isn't likely to appear in the critical constellations of a Helen Vendler or a Harold Bloom any time soon. So its up to what is affectionately known as the 'cult audience' to give him his due" ..........Travis Nichols. Please see his full page review of Backscatter in the literary magazine: Believer, which these snippets have been excerpted from.
In 2004, Olson was the recipient of The Stranger Genius Award for Literature. He has also received three Fund For Poetry Awards and Souls Of Wind was shortlisted for a Believer magazine book of the year award.
John Olson also keeps a blog, Tillalala Chronicles, at www.tillalala.blogspot.com
John lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife Roberta and their cat Toby. No actual book has been dropped on Toby. Toby’s feelings about Shakespeare remain private and mute, but his passion for treats and cherry pie are immodestly undisguised, and continue unabated.
From the Black Widow Press site (http://www.blackwidowpress.com/ ):
What advance readers are saying about John Olson's upcoming: Larynx Galaxy!!!
"John Olson is afraid of no word or trope of words, and especially not of tropes of ideas looming into and out of one another. And no emotion or boundaryless compounding of emotions is beyond likelihood in the presence of his surging perceptions as they float in inspiration. Larynx Galaxy is also a syrinx galaxy playing on the panpipes of imagination."
-Michael McClure
John Olson's Larynx Galaxy is a cross between The Poetics of Space and The Revolution of Everyday Life. It spins off both of these seminal texts and recreates a new Utopian boundary-free world in which all the senses are engaged simultaneously and the mind is a minefield where you (the reader) must proceed at your own risk. Olson is an encylopedist, a bricologist, an omnivore--the total package, as they say--in the tradition of The Pillow Book and Walden. He has written a text for the ages--brilliant, hallucinatory, clearheaded--verging on the edges of infinity, yet forever at home in the world.
--- Lewis Warsh
"Olson is an original, and that accomplishment is an extraordinary feat at this point in the long history of literature. His prose poems do not remind me of anyone else's work. While elements of Surrealism are involved, he is not a Surrealist: while his non-narrative, exploding juxtapositions reveal a background awareness of Surrealism, thematic development is always present, so that a given work of one to three pages, unlike Language Poetry, does not erase itself as it proceeds; there is a floating focus that functions like a jungle gym. On this "gym," Olson displays his linguistic acrobatics, juxtaposing the totally unexpected with, to borrow Hart Crane's marvelous phrase, "the logic of metaphor." So a piece advances in several directions at once and concludes when its duration is sensed as complete." ----Clayton Eshleman
Our release of Backscatter: New and Selected Poems provides a good introduction to the prose poems of John Olson. Larynx Galaxy will take the reader to the next plane of the Olson experience.
Comments on John Olson's Backscatter, his prose poems and poetry:
"John Olson's poetry is a linguistic burlesque show. Every aspect of the English language gets done up in feathers and spangles to shimmy and titillate, and you can almost hear the bawdy trombone accenting John Olson's post-structuralist puns, his sonic shenanigans. He announces as much in the first line of this excellent compendium: '"The exhilaration of poetry is in its gall, its brassy irrelevence and gunpowder vowels, its pulleys and popcorn and delirious birds.'" ..Olson's far too playful a poet to ever get his critical due in polite society. Nonetheless, he is a true catawampus heir to the American lyric tradition of Dickinson, Poe, Stevens, and Ashbery (by way of Robert Desnos and Raymond Roussel, among many gleeful others)....These works have been selected astutely, and presented in a kind of Olson Omnibus...Firmly outside the academia, Olson isn't likely to appear in the critical constellations of a Helen Vendler or a Harold Bloom any time soon. So its up to what is affectionately known as the 'cult audience' to give him his due" ..........Travis Nichols. Please see his full page review of Backscatter in the literary magazine: Believer, which these snippets have been excerpted from.
Alison
I'm 5' 9,” a man of average height, early 40s, graying on the edges. Alison, when we dated, was 50' 7” tall, and weighed a little under 1200 lbs. She was dainty. At least, for her height. I guess you could say she was a bit on the thin side. But curves? Oh my god she had curves.
I took her to dinner on our first date. We had to go to a seaside restaurant near Malibu so that Alison could sit cross-legged on the beach. She wore a dress of her own making. She called it a “skyscraper dress.” It had a deep scoop neckline on front, and a center back zipper. The pull tab and slider, which was made of brass, must have weighed 135 lbs. The zipper had been made at the Globe Iron Foundry in Commerce. Globe did everything from automotive components to food processing equipment. They were happy to make her a zipper.
The zipper was expensive, but everything in Alison's world was expensive. Money was not a problem. She was very popular with construction outfits. She did most of the work that was normally done by crane. Only Alison was able to do it much faster. Workers just had to shout what they needed and she would pick it up and put it where they wanted as easy as if she were playing with a doll set.
I wanted dinner to be special on our first date. I had an 8 oz. filet mignon with potato risotto, chanterelle mushroom, and grilled asparagus. Alison had the seafood paella with prawns, mussels, Manilla clams, scallops, chorizo, chicken, and saffron rice in a seafood broth. She was served the equivalent of eight servings. They put it in a huge cauldron which was brought down to the beach by flatbed truck. She also drank ten bottles of wine. Our bill came to something like $10,000 dollars. I don't remember. I was pretty tipsy when we left. Alison carried me home. There was no need to drive. She could travel ten miles in ten minutes. She merely had to be careful not to step on any cars or trucks.
Sex was difficult. Kissing didn't work at all. We tried it. But she felt nothing. My lips against hers were like two little electrons brushing the skin of a dolphin. There was no sensation other than that of my hair tickling her upper lip. The air streaming down from her nose made me uncomfortably hot. I tried to avoid looking up through her nostrils, but a morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I got a glance at the two caverns at the bottom of her nose. It was less than scenic.
Cunnilingus and intercourse were pretty much one and the same thing. The size of my penis compared to the size of her vagina was not a viable match. I would don a wet suit and insert my entire body into her vagina, hold my breath, and search for her clitoris. Her clitoris was easy to find. It was the size of a basketball. I had to satisfy myself when I was finished. She felt strongly that sexual gratification should be mutual. But there was little that she could do. I tried bouncing up and down on her breast, but it simply gave her a bruise, and did nothing to stimulate me erotically. I felt bashful about masturbating in front of her, but eventually I grew accustomed to the practice, and went at vigorously while cradled between her gigantic breasts.
She tried not to laugh. But she couldn't help it. The agitations of my body between her breasts was ticklish. Once, she laughed so hard I was blown clear across the room, and was lucky to land with my buttocks against the wall.
I can't remember why we broke apart. I tried to be patient about a number of Alison's habits. She was frequently late, and when we went somewhere, it would take her hours to get ready. She used massive quantities of eye shadow and lipstick, quantities hard to supply in the devices required for application. Her tube of lipstick had been manufactured by a special company and was roughly the size of a conduit, or rocket ship.
She came close to stepping on me a number of times. She tended to be absent-minded. At first, she apologized profusely, but after a while it began to irritate her. She said I did it purposively to remind her of her unequal status in our relationship.
What do you mean by unequal status, I asked, utterly perplexed.
She said my constant deference diminished her. She hated it. It made her feel small.
Small?
Yes, small, she said. You make me feel awkward. Why can't you sit on my shoulder more often?
Because I'm not a parakeet, I said.
Well, that last remark was what did it. She loved little animals, but could not live with them. The risk was too great. But the real reason she felt so aggrieved at this remark was because she was convinced that her femininity is what brought about the best in a man. And I failed her in this respect.
She was right. I had been unbending about a number of things, including taking a bath with her. But what really bugged her was my unending wariness. My overweening concern, the grandeur of my solicitude. My colossal, overbearing scrutiny. She could not achieve intimacy with a man whose arrogant, day-to-day deference made her feel so inadequate. So stunted. So small.
I still see her occasionally, from afar, her head towering above the buildings, bent down, her eyes with their own worried regard, the bruised self-esteem of someone who craves the gentle wine of anonymity.
Another story you may enjoy, is the wonderful My Life in Five Paragraphs, an autobiographical fiction much more experimental than this one, if you're itching for some serious innovation.
I took her to dinner on our first date. We had to go to a seaside restaurant near Malibu so that Alison could sit cross-legged on the beach. She wore a dress of her own making. She called it a “skyscraper dress.” It had a deep scoop neckline on front, and a center back zipper. The pull tab and slider, which was made of brass, must have weighed 135 lbs. The zipper had been made at the Globe Iron Foundry in Commerce. Globe did everything from automotive components to food processing equipment. They were happy to make her a zipper.
The zipper was expensive, but everything in Alison's world was expensive. Money was not a problem. She was very popular with construction outfits. She did most of the work that was normally done by crane. Only Alison was able to do it much faster. Workers just had to shout what they needed and she would pick it up and put it where they wanted as easy as if she were playing with a doll set.
I wanted dinner to be special on our first date. I had an 8 oz. filet mignon with potato risotto, chanterelle mushroom, and grilled asparagus. Alison had the seafood paella with prawns, mussels, Manilla clams, scallops, chorizo, chicken, and saffron rice in a seafood broth. She was served the equivalent of eight servings. They put it in a huge cauldron which was brought down to the beach by flatbed truck. She also drank ten bottles of wine. Our bill came to something like $10,000 dollars. I don't remember. I was pretty tipsy when we left. Alison carried me home. There was no need to drive. She could travel ten miles in ten minutes. She merely had to be careful not to step on any cars or trucks.
Sex was difficult. Kissing didn't work at all. We tried it. But she felt nothing. My lips against hers were like two little electrons brushing the skin of a dolphin. There was no sensation other than that of my hair tickling her upper lip. The air streaming down from her nose made me uncomfortably hot. I tried to avoid looking up through her nostrils, but a morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I got a glance at the two caverns at the bottom of her nose. It was less than scenic.
Cunnilingus and intercourse were pretty much one and the same thing. The size of my penis compared to the size of her vagina was not a viable match. I would don a wet suit and insert my entire body into her vagina, hold my breath, and search for her clitoris. Her clitoris was easy to find. It was the size of a basketball. I had to satisfy myself when I was finished. She felt strongly that sexual gratification should be mutual. But there was little that she could do. I tried bouncing up and down on her breast, but it simply gave her a bruise, and did nothing to stimulate me erotically. I felt bashful about masturbating in front of her, but eventually I grew accustomed to the practice, and went at vigorously while cradled between her gigantic breasts.
She tried not to laugh. But she couldn't help it. The agitations of my body between her breasts was ticklish. Once, she laughed so hard I was blown clear across the room, and was lucky to land with my buttocks against the wall.
I can't remember why we broke apart. I tried to be patient about a number of Alison's habits. She was frequently late, and when we went somewhere, it would take her hours to get ready. She used massive quantities of eye shadow and lipstick, quantities hard to supply in the devices required for application. Her tube of lipstick had been manufactured by a special company and was roughly the size of a conduit, or rocket ship.
She came close to stepping on me a number of times. She tended to be absent-minded. At first, she apologized profusely, but after a while it began to irritate her. She said I did it purposively to remind her of her unequal status in our relationship.
What do you mean by unequal status, I asked, utterly perplexed.
She said my constant deference diminished her. She hated it. It made her feel small.
Small?
Yes, small, she said. You make me feel awkward. Why can't you sit on my shoulder more often?
Because I'm not a parakeet, I said.
Well, that last remark was what did it. She loved little animals, but could not live with them. The risk was too great. But the real reason she felt so aggrieved at this remark was because she was convinced that her femininity is what brought about the best in a man. And I failed her in this respect.
She was right. I had been unbending about a number of things, including taking a bath with her. But what really bugged her was my unending wariness. My overweening concern, the grandeur of my solicitude. My colossal, overbearing scrutiny. She could not achieve intimacy with a man whose arrogant, day-to-day deference made her feel so inadequate. So stunted. So small.
I still see her occasionally, from afar, her head towering above the buildings, bent down, her eyes with their own worried regard, the bruised self-esteem of someone who craves the gentle wine of anonymity.
Another story you may enjoy, is the wonderful My Life in Five Paragraphs, an autobiographical fiction much more experimental than this one, if you're itching for some serious innovation.
John on "Alison"
My primary value in all writing is alterity. Otherness. Strangeness. What the Russian writer and critic Viktor Shklovsky termed ostranenie, which means defamiliarization, and is the technique of inducing an audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar. All art does this to one degree or another. The effect is particularly pronounced among some of the writers and artists at the beginning of the 20th century. Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons are examples of converting the familiar into the unfamiliar. In the literary arts, this might consist of disrupting conventional syntax, as Stein did in Tender Buttons, or fusing common words to make new words, as Joyce did in Finnegans Wake.
Fiction writers such as Lawrence Sterne, Samuel Beckett, and Virginia Woolf have departed from conventional plot structure to focus the reader’s attention on the medium of language itself. I would characterize the bulk of my writing as incorporating these tendencies. Stein has been a seminal influence. People have a tendency to characterize my writing as surrealist, but while surrealism has also been a wellspring of inspiration for me, it is the more Cubistic writing of Stein that has propelled my writing. I should also mention the work of Arthur Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrar, and Guillaume Apollinaire. In the same way that Cubism slashed and broke up shape and volume to create a mode of perception closer to that of actual life, in which many different sensations are experienced at once, the aforementioned writers shattered conventional poetic structure to convey a sense of ongoing, continuous simultaneity. Jack Kerouac gave this strategy further impetus with his notion of “bop spontaneity.” This was a feverish attention to language as a driving force for which Neil Cassady’s manic appetites and driving became a symbol.
“Alison,” as a few other of my recent fictions, has been a departure in the opposite direction. Which is to say the desire to construct a narrative on more conventional standards: a beginning, a middle, and an end, and to give an attention to sentence structure according to its more conventional modes, à la Gustaf Flaubert, whose sentences are so beautifully crafted. In this sense, the project became experimental for me. I’ve been so accustomed to doing just the opposite. This is not to say I wanted something tame. Au contraire. I wanted something wildly eccentric. Carnivalesque. Strange. On this occasion I decided, rather than to make the familiar unfamiliar, I would make the unfamiliar familiar. This is not new. Writers such as Donald Barthelme, who published a great deal of his work in the New Yorker, hardly a venue of experimental writing, created stories premised on wildly eccentric situations, yet he had the knack of making these things appear weirdly normal. That’s the oxymoronic formula I had in mind for “Alison.” A story that inhabited the realm of the weirdly normal.
Fiction writers such as Lawrence Sterne, Samuel Beckett, and Virginia Woolf have departed from conventional plot structure to focus the reader’s attention on the medium of language itself. I would characterize the bulk of my writing as incorporating these tendencies. Stein has been a seminal influence. People have a tendency to characterize my writing as surrealist, but while surrealism has also been a wellspring of inspiration for me, it is the more Cubistic writing of Stein that has propelled my writing. I should also mention the work of Arthur Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrar, and Guillaume Apollinaire. In the same way that Cubism slashed and broke up shape and volume to create a mode of perception closer to that of actual life, in which many different sensations are experienced at once, the aforementioned writers shattered conventional poetic structure to convey a sense of ongoing, continuous simultaneity. Jack Kerouac gave this strategy further impetus with his notion of “bop spontaneity.” This was a feverish attention to language as a driving force for which Neil Cassady’s manic appetites and driving became a symbol.
“Alison,” as a few other of my recent fictions, has been a departure in the opposite direction. Which is to say the desire to construct a narrative on more conventional standards: a beginning, a middle, and an end, and to give an attention to sentence structure according to its more conventional modes, à la Gustaf Flaubert, whose sentences are so beautifully crafted. In this sense, the project became experimental for me. I’ve been so accustomed to doing just the opposite. This is not to say I wanted something tame. Au contraire. I wanted something wildly eccentric. Carnivalesque. Strange. On this occasion I decided, rather than to make the familiar unfamiliar, I would make the unfamiliar familiar. This is not new. Writers such as Donald Barthelme, who published a great deal of his work in the New Yorker, hardly a venue of experimental writing, created stories premised on wildly eccentric situations, yet he had the knack of making these things appear weirdly normal. That’s the oxymoronic formula I had in mind for “Alison.” A story that inhabited the realm of the weirdly normal.
About 2010 FlameFlower Contest winner, JC Mendizabal
"I arrived in the United States in the early '80s, at the start of the civil war in El Salvador and have lived in San Francisco since then. I have made the journey back to El Salvador many times in the last 20 years, and consider myself a synthesis of both cultures.
I am a multi-media artist who aims to blend sound, images and text through the use of process driven procedures. My formal training is in music composition and creative writing. I have taken the forms, the transformational manipulations and the generative approach of formal and experimental music composition and I have applied them to video, writing and web-based multimedia creations. I founded Black Note Music in 1995, an electronic music label for experimental boundary-defying music. To date, I have released over 50 albums using various aliases (Kyron, Projective Module, Via Sinistrae, Radio Free Clear Light.)"
JC Mendizabal
Black Note Music
http://www.blacknotemusic.com
Via Sinistrae
http://www.viasinistrae.com
http://sinistrae.libsyn.com/
Other Sites
http://www.allhaildiscordia.com/
http://maddogmagick.blogspot.com/
http://secretsareeverywhere.blogspot.com/
This contest also has its own website,
http://flameflower.weebly.com/
I am a multi-media artist who aims to blend sound, images and text through the use of process driven procedures. My formal training is in music composition and creative writing. I have taken the forms, the transformational manipulations and the generative approach of formal and experimental music composition and I have applied them to video, writing and web-based multimedia creations. I founded Black Note Music in 1995, an electronic music label for experimental boundary-defying music. To date, I have released over 50 albums using various aliases (Kyron, Projective Module, Via Sinistrae, Radio Free Clear Light.)"
JC Mendizabal
Black Note Music
http://www.blacknotemusic.com
Via Sinistrae
http://www.viasinistrae.com
http://sinistrae.libsyn.com/
Other Sites
http://www.allhaildiscordia.com/
http://maddogmagick.blogspot.com/
http://secretsareeverywhere.blogspot.com/
This contest also has its own website,
http://flameflower.weebly.com/
Wandering in the Shadows
“The goal is simple but difficult to comprehend.” Older Brother said it in carefully measured tones and his eyes widened to emphasize the weight of his words. I had begun to suspect that the goal transcended any words that he or I could utter, that it was hiding right in the corner that we refused to look at, that it scampered in the shadows that our conversations left behind them with every verbal turn.
But I wanted to hear what he had to say. Right then, it was my goal to listen to him and to take in his words even if their effect within me was not what he had intended. The timbre of his voice was as crucial as the rhythm of the syllables that rubbed against each other like tiny silver stones. “We must find a way to rise above the circumstances that surround us, to banish the forces that seek to cage us in. We must disrupt years of mechanized conditioning and find a way out, a way out of the prison, a way out of the cage.”I nodded and sincerely agreed. It was never what we said but what we didn’t say that left me with a gap in the pit of my stomach.
There was something that we had been avoiding, and we had been avoiding it for years, together. We had shared years of looking elsewhere, years of carefully tracing our steps around a gap in our understanding that pulsed and breathed like an angry stingray. I couldn’t point to it because I was avoiding it as much as he was. And even if I did point, it would only shift quickly into a different corner and our conversation would continue and soon I would once again feel it pulsing at my back. I could only sometimes call attention to it but even the call itself would soon be swallowed in the vortex of our endless stream of words.
I remembered all of this in the darkness, even if it seemed to mean little if anything to me now, even if it was all incomprehensible to the one that now walked alone in the Old House, trying to ascertain where things were and what meaning they now implied with their existence. At first, I could only see the outline of everything, like thin lines drawn on black paper to suggest a wall or a desk or a painting. I didn’t reach out to touch anything because I didn’t want to find out that there was nothing there for me to touch. I was standing over the second stairway, looking all around me and wondering how I came to be here.
Was I remembering Older Brother while I walked through the Old House in the darkness or was I thinking of the Old House while Older Brother talked to me about leaving the past behind? Here was the past itself, in clear and distinct shapes and heavy massive volumes. Here was the long white wall that ended in gray river rocks, spread out in random patterns over an ocean of sand, subtly vibrant with implied whispers of endless suffering, of a place where old soldiers went to die, where they vanished forever after a long life of battle and hardship.
Here was the oval shaped dinner table which was also an ancient city full of criminals, here were the dark wooden stairs which were also an old port full of ships and soldiers. I turned around and I could see the long open windows that surrounded the corner of the upper living room, and I could see the dim lights of a city that pulsed with an angry desperation that reached through the glass like a giant invisible hand covered in rough hair. I looked up towards the long and final corridor. There was a light in Father’s bedroom. I couldn’t stop myself from believing that it was him, that he was up there and awake and that he was bound to notice that something or someone was wandering out here in the darkness.
But it was only a light, a dim yellow light in the middle of black emptiness. I moved slowly through the open space that surrounded me. I looked up towards the slanted wooden ceiling and the Old House overwhelmed me like an ancient temple. For me there was nothing, there could never be anything, more ancient than the Old House. The Old House was the place where everything began and it would have to be the place where everything ended. As I looked up, I could sense the walls and the roof rise up above me, or maybe I was just shrinking as I fixed my attention on the apex of the wooden pyramid.
The more I looked, the larger the Old House became, the more it spread out in all directions. I pulled away from that vision and stepped into Grandmother’s room. It was a small white barren room just to the left of the last set of stairs. There was no one there. Nothing but shiny white bricks and open windows. I looked towards the house next door and I thought I saw a light there, but it could have been nothing, a firefly, a match, maybe even just the reflection of the light that was still shining in Father’s room, calling to me without spoken words. I was by then convinced that Father was there, behind the closed door at the end of the final hallway. I had to make certain that he didn’t see me.
I had to make sure that he never became aware that I had come here in the darkest hours after midnight and that I had wandered through his house like an intruder without any apparent purpose, moving little things that should have remained still. I had to be careful to leave him undisturbed and to eventually find a way back and out that didn’t leave any trace of my presence. “We must find a way to break the chains that have held us. We have to work on this. It won’t be easy. Nothing that truly matters can be easy. “
Older Brother said it and his eyes were as wide as before. As always, I listened and agreed, for there was nothing that I could disagree with in what he had spoken, there was no impulse within me to disagree at all. The words flowed out of him and into me like water and water easily changed shape to fit a new container, leaving behind any previous form it might have held.
I spoke for the first and only time to him that day and I said:“It is only because of the memory of what you once were that it is still good to see you. You once were something truly great, so great that some of it still slips through what you have now become.” I thought that maybe that was why we would recurrently return to our past, to reexamine our childhood. Maybe it still held on tightly to that which we valued above all things. Maybe that was why I found myself in the Old House now, wandering through the darkness, hiding from the light.
I lifted my eyes towards the slanted roof again and I allowed myself to float upwards. I rose up slowly, feeling the sensation of freedom rise within me as I released my hold on the floor. There, at the very apex of the wooden pyramid, that is where I would find my escape route.I saw the empty garden in the distance and the long wooden doors with their rattling little glass windows. I heard a lonely car roaming the empty streets outside, moving slowly from corner to corner, maybe looking for something or someone they had lost. I rose towards the apex, feeling sure that I would soon leave this place behind. Maybe then there would be no Father. Maybe then there would be no Older Brother. I didn’t know what waited for me on the other side of that wooden barrier but I was eager to face it. I had been avoiding it for far too long. The darkness grew deeper around me, heavier and more oppressive. But it couldn’t bother me. It was now a thing of the past.
But I wanted to hear what he had to say. Right then, it was my goal to listen to him and to take in his words even if their effect within me was not what he had intended. The timbre of his voice was as crucial as the rhythm of the syllables that rubbed against each other like tiny silver stones. “We must find a way to rise above the circumstances that surround us, to banish the forces that seek to cage us in. We must disrupt years of mechanized conditioning and find a way out, a way out of the prison, a way out of the cage.”I nodded and sincerely agreed. It was never what we said but what we didn’t say that left me with a gap in the pit of my stomach.
There was something that we had been avoiding, and we had been avoiding it for years, together. We had shared years of looking elsewhere, years of carefully tracing our steps around a gap in our understanding that pulsed and breathed like an angry stingray. I couldn’t point to it because I was avoiding it as much as he was. And even if I did point, it would only shift quickly into a different corner and our conversation would continue and soon I would once again feel it pulsing at my back. I could only sometimes call attention to it but even the call itself would soon be swallowed in the vortex of our endless stream of words.
I remembered all of this in the darkness, even if it seemed to mean little if anything to me now, even if it was all incomprehensible to the one that now walked alone in the Old House, trying to ascertain where things were and what meaning they now implied with their existence. At first, I could only see the outline of everything, like thin lines drawn on black paper to suggest a wall or a desk or a painting. I didn’t reach out to touch anything because I didn’t want to find out that there was nothing there for me to touch. I was standing over the second stairway, looking all around me and wondering how I came to be here.
Was I remembering Older Brother while I walked through the Old House in the darkness or was I thinking of the Old House while Older Brother talked to me about leaving the past behind? Here was the past itself, in clear and distinct shapes and heavy massive volumes. Here was the long white wall that ended in gray river rocks, spread out in random patterns over an ocean of sand, subtly vibrant with implied whispers of endless suffering, of a place where old soldiers went to die, where they vanished forever after a long life of battle and hardship.
Here was the oval shaped dinner table which was also an ancient city full of criminals, here were the dark wooden stairs which were also an old port full of ships and soldiers. I turned around and I could see the long open windows that surrounded the corner of the upper living room, and I could see the dim lights of a city that pulsed with an angry desperation that reached through the glass like a giant invisible hand covered in rough hair. I looked up towards the long and final corridor. There was a light in Father’s bedroom. I couldn’t stop myself from believing that it was him, that he was up there and awake and that he was bound to notice that something or someone was wandering out here in the darkness.
But it was only a light, a dim yellow light in the middle of black emptiness. I moved slowly through the open space that surrounded me. I looked up towards the slanted wooden ceiling and the Old House overwhelmed me like an ancient temple. For me there was nothing, there could never be anything, more ancient than the Old House. The Old House was the place where everything began and it would have to be the place where everything ended. As I looked up, I could sense the walls and the roof rise up above me, or maybe I was just shrinking as I fixed my attention on the apex of the wooden pyramid.
The more I looked, the larger the Old House became, the more it spread out in all directions. I pulled away from that vision and stepped into Grandmother’s room. It was a small white barren room just to the left of the last set of stairs. There was no one there. Nothing but shiny white bricks and open windows. I looked towards the house next door and I thought I saw a light there, but it could have been nothing, a firefly, a match, maybe even just the reflection of the light that was still shining in Father’s room, calling to me without spoken words. I was by then convinced that Father was there, behind the closed door at the end of the final hallway. I had to make certain that he didn’t see me.
I had to make sure that he never became aware that I had come here in the darkest hours after midnight and that I had wandered through his house like an intruder without any apparent purpose, moving little things that should have remained still. I had to be careful to leave him undisturbed and to eventually find a way back and out that didn’t leave any trace of my presence. “We must find a way to break the chains that have held us. We have to work on this. It won’t be easy. Nothing that truly matters can be easy. “
Older Brother said it and his eyes were as wide as before. As always, I listened and agreed, for there was nothing that I could disagree with in what he had spoken, there was no impulse within me to disagree at all. The words flowed out of him and into me like water and water easily changed shape to fit a new container, leaving behind any previous form it might have held.
I spoke for the first and only time to him that day and I said:“It is only because of the memory of what you once were that it is still good to see you. You once were something truly great, so great that some of it still slips through what you have now become.” I thought that maybe that was why we would recurrently return to our past, to reexamine our childhood. Maybe it still held on tightly to that which we valued above all things. Maybe that was why I found myself in the Old House now, wandering through the darkness, hiding from the light.
I lifted my eyes towards the slanted roof again and I allowed myself to float upwards. I rose up slowly, feeling the sensation of freedom rise within me as I released my hold on the floor. There, at the very apex of the wooden pyramid, that is where I would find my escape route.I saw the empty garden in the distance and the long wooden doors with their rattling little glass windows. I heard a lonely car roaming the empty streets outside, moving slowly from corner to corner, maybe looking for something or someone they had lost. I rose towards the apex, feeling sure that I would soon leave this place behind. Maybe then there would be no Father. Maybe then there would be no Older Brother. I didn’t know what waited for me on the other side of that wooden barrier but I was eager to face it. I had been avoiding it for far too long. The darkness grew deeper around me, heavier and more oppressive. But it couldn’t bother me. It was now a thing of the past.
Commentary by JC Mendizabal
I work in several parallel disciplines. I create electronic music, texts and video and allow each of them to affect the others in unpredictable ways.
I allow for musical ideas to transform my writing, and I take elements of form that I discover in the writing and apply those to video. In this way, instead of the different disciplines serving as distractions or contradictions, they augment the other and prevent any of approach from getting stale. Inspired by the ideas of John Cage, I frequently work with randomness and isomorphism. I am driven by the impulse to blend visual, audio and textual elements in search of a truly subversive experience. I push myself to be process driven, often creating rules and adhering to them without attempting to further control the final outcome. By working in this way, I push myself creatively and focus exclusively on the process of creation.
I am also often inspired by the people and landscape of my home in San Francisco, as well as my native country, El Salvador. I strive to capture the delicacy and beauty of these unique areas and the cultures and individuals that thrive within them. I am motivated to explore the consciousness of these cultures through the intersection of language, imagery and sound.
I approach my texts specifically as forms of music that also have a layer of meaning attached to them. Many times the meaning springs forth freely from the work with pure textual form. In this way, instead of me expressing something that is already established in my mind, the writing becomes a process of constant discovery.
I allow for musical ideas to transform my writing, and I take elements of form that I discover in the writing and apply those to video. In this way, instead of the different disciplines serving as distractions or contradictions, they augment the other and prevent any of approach from getting stale. Inspired by the ideas of John Cage, I frequently work with randomness and isomorphism. I am driven by the impulse to blend visual, audio and textual elements in search of a truly subversive experience. I push myself to be process driven, often creating rules and adhering to them without attempting to further control the final outcome. By working in this way, I push myself creatively and focus exclusively on the process of creation.
I am also often inspired by the people and landscape of my home in San Francisco, as well as my native country, El Salvador. I strive to capture the delicacy and beauty of these unique areas and the cultures and individuals that thrive within them. I am motivated to explore the consciousness of these cultures through the intersection of language, imagery and sound.
I approach my texts specifically as forms of music that also have a layer of meaning attached to them. Many times the meaning springs forth freely from the work with pure textual form. In this way, instead of me expressing something that is already established in my mind, the writing becomes a process of constant discovery.
Commentary by Tantra Bensko
Wandering in the Shadows lets us know right off the bat that the subject is not easily captured in words, or at least traditional words and story formatting, so we are ready to see where language can take us when reaching beyond itself. And this must be done as the story suggests, to take us out of our cage, our conditioning, and transcend the forces trying to hold us down.
This is a powerful use for Experimental Fiction, as it shakes us out of our default reasoning that has been programmed into us by those that want to keep us where we are. Things speak here and there in this story without words, and we are left with images that wash away underneath our feet, leaving us with something akin to nothingness.The overlapping of memory and the present, imagination and “reality,” becomes jumbled and hard to pin down for so many people, our fragile brains in charge of merging the two hemispheres seamlessly to fit in with society.
Yet the two sides, the left being linear, and focusing on the past and future and separate identity, and the right, being in the now, in the world of connection, sometimes have a mind of their own. Does the past really go away? Do people really stop living in their old houses? If we experimentally open up to the flow of the right brain, and the past found in the left brain, where can we end up, how integrate the aspects of our lives in new ways that move us forward, into the unknown?Tiny silver stones rubbed together by the tone of voice take us into musical places within ourselves that pure words can’t go.
The two hemispheres of the brain rub together, making a non-melody of the friction, random, yet guided. We slide into the multi-times, the parallel dimensions, the unseen realms, and come to terms with them in ways our selves grounded in one point of space time may never fully understand in words.
I’ve never thought of contests as being really about what is best in an absolute way, but as being a reflection of the judge’s taste. I knew nothing about this writer until after I awarded him the prize, and once reading his background, I could see why his work ended up representing Experimental Writing for me. His influence of the musician John Cage, who is also my main musical influence, and his take on ancient history seeming to be the same as mine, and his words of moving beyond the cage we have been put into all resonate within the story he submitted.
Even his website named after Discordianism is a synchronicity, as I used to live with its founder. I could take the liberty to label him as creating Lucid Fiction, exploring consciousness and subjects that are generally considered improper for literature due to the need to appear in sync with the mainstream ideas of what reality is, using his work to help society see beyond the veils, going beyond traditional plot and character definitions to expand our awareness. I’m excited to introduce not only his writing but also his magical music to new audiences.
This is a powerful use for Experimental Fiction, as it shakes us out of our default reasoning that has been programmed into us by those that want to keep us where we are. Things speak here and there in this story without words, and we are left with images that wash away underneath our feet, leaving us with something akin to nothingness.The overlapping of memory and the present, imagination and “reality,” becomes jumbled and hard to pin down for so many people, our fragile brains in charge of merging the two hemispheres seamlessly to fit in with society.
Yet the two sides, the left being linear, and focusing on the past and future and separate identity, and the right, being in the now, in the world of connection, sometimes have a mind of their own. Does the past really go away? Do people really stop living in their old houses? If we experimentally open up to the flow of the right brain, and the past found in the left brain, where can we end up, how integrate the aspects of our lives in new ways that move us forward, into the unknown?Tiny silver stones rubbed together by the tone of voice take us into musical places within ourselves that pure words can’t go.
The two hemispheres of the brain rub together, making a non-melody of the friction, random, yet guided. We slide into the multi-times, the parallel dimensions, the unseen realms, and come to terms with them in ways our selves grounded in one point of space time may never fully understand in words.
I’ve never thought of contests as being really about what is best in an absolute way, but as being a reflection of the judge’s taste. I knew nothing about this writer until after I awarded him the prize, and once reading his background, I could see why his work ended up representing Experimental Writing for me. His influence of the musician John Cage, who is also my main musical influence, and his take on ancient history seeming to be the same as mine, and his words of moving beyond the cage we have been put into all resonate within the story he submitted.
Even his website named after Discordianism is a synchronicity, as I used to live with its founder. I could take the liberty to label him as creating Lucid Fiction, exploring consciousness and subjects that are generally considered improper for literature due to the need to appear in sync with the mainstream ideas of what reality is, using his work to help society see beyond the veils, going beyond traditional plot and character definitions to expand our awareness. I’m excited to introduce not only his writing but also his magical music to new audiences.
News
John Olson has a piece in an upcoming LucidPlay e-chapbook.
About Tantra Bensko, judge of the FlameFlower Contest
Tantra Bensko works as an Instructor through UCLA Extension Writers Program and Writers College, and her own academy teaching Fiction Writing online.
She is the author of Lucid Membrane put out by Night Publishing, as well as the short story collection chapbook, published by Naissance Press, Watching the Windows Sleep and the tiny chapbook, Swinging on the Edge of Day. 10 Pages Press published her e chapbook of poetry, Liminal. And ISMs Press has published her chapbook, The Cabinet of What You Don't See. Her second book of stories is out, called Collapsible Horizon, and Make-Do Publishing plans to put out another collection as well, called Yard Man. Dog Horn Publishing is putting out a novel, Unside: A Book of Closed Time-Like Curves. She received her MA in English from FSU and her MFA in writing from the University of Iowa's Writing Workshop. She has nearly 200 creative writing publications in magazines, and has won a variety of awards.
She promotes innovative literature through much reviewing, and publishing chapbooks, a magazine, and a resource site.
She is the author of Lucid Membrane put out by Night Publishing, as well as the short story collection chapbook, published by Naissance Press, Watching the Windows Sleep and the tiny chapbook, Swinging on the Edge of Day. 10 Pages Press published her e chapbook of poetry, Liminal. And ISMs Press has published her chapbook, The Cabinet of What You Don't See. Her second book of stories is out, called Collapsible Horizon, and Make-Do Publishing plans to put out another collection as well, called Yard Man. Dog Horn Publishing is putting out a novel, Unside: A Book of Closed Time-Like Curves. She received her MA in English from FSU and her MFA in writing from the University of Iowa's Writing Workshop. She has nearly 200 creative writing publications in magazines, and has won a variety of awards.
She promotes innovative literature through much reviewing, and publishing chapbooks, a magazine, and a resource site.